to give you an idea of what this cast looks like, picture one of those russian dancers, you know the ones with the fur hats and black knee-high boots, arms crossed in front of chest and squatting nearly to the ground. baby's cast leaves her looking kind of like that, minus the fur hat and black boots. hubby is convinced she'll be a world famous contortionist after all is said and done. her legs are pushed all the way to the side (looks like she's doing the splits) and then her thighs are casted at a 90 degree perpendicular angle to her body and her knees are at a 90 degree angle to her thighs. (see picture below in case my description is just way too convoluted.) the doctor literally had to cut muscles to position her legs this way, all of which is necessary in order to properly set and hold her hip in place while the hip socket forms around the femural head.
it sounds awful and honestly, it is pretty bad, but it amazes me how well baby has adjusted to all of this. we put her down on her belly and she's like a little break dancer spinning 'round in that cast. before too long, she'll be dragging it around the house like a little snail. so, baby doesn't seem to mind it all that much.
unlike baby, mami and papi are struggling a bit more with the cast, but this has more to do with the literal backache of lugging her now 20-and-a-half pound butt around and changing her gooey poopy diapers. the cast has a 4x10 hole left open for the diaper. this hole is just big enough to stuff a size 1 diaper into. thus far, knock on wood, we've avoided any leaks or major blowouts so after two weeks in this thing, baby still doesn't stink. (apparently, this is quite uncommon--most spica casts can clear a room after just one week.) the pee diaper changes are cake. it's the poo that requires a second set of arms. i need one hand to pull the diaper away, another two to hold wipes at the edge of the cast to prevent poo from oozing along the sides and another to wipe all her pieces-parts. but since i've only got two hands, this usually means poo ends up on the sides (taped expertly with water and poo proof tape), on my hands, on her feet and on the changing pad. it's a mess. and to top it all off, i've got the world's most sensitive gag reflex, so in addition poo oozing its way onto every available surface, there i stand hacking and gagging through the whole process. it's quite a show, i'm sure.
one benefit to all this, my arms have never been so toned. i would suggest carrying around a 20-pound weight to get an idea of what it's like, but that just wouldn't do our situation justice. maybe if the weight sprouted wiggly arms, a mewling head, and two little feet. we have to be sure we don't knock her feet into door frames when entering rooms and though her cast is as hard and rigid as cement, her torso isn't and she ends up wet noodling around a lot if we're not careful. it's unbelievable the muscles needed to just get her into a good position for nursing--for the first week, my whole body ached.
now, back to the tango that brought us here. this all started out as a "click" and then a "clank." doctors kept saying, "she has a click." or "i can feel a click." or "oh my! now it's a clank." hubby and i began to wonder if we should call on click and clack on car talk rather than these pediatricians and orthopedists. for the longest time, we only knew of this ailment as "the click." we had no idea what it meant or why we were being asked to get ultrasounds and to see specialists. it was maddening. for a while, we were seeing this general orthopedist who was a self-proclaimed idiot when it came to treating infants. my favorite visit with him was an especially brief visit when he provided his final diagnosis of baby. he walked into the room with his trusty caterpillar perched on his top lip, proceeded to jiggle the hip joint on an adult skeleton model and said, "this is what's wrong with her hip." he then exits stage right. okay, so he actually stuck around a minute more to tell us to get a "non-obtrusive-you'll-hardly-notice-it" harness thingy (the harness was actually quite obtrusive and we did notice it because it took 20 minutes to get her into it after each diaper change).
after several visits like this with the orthopedist, residents, and pediatrician, we eventually developed a perpetual stream of steam spouting from our ears and a permanent red hue in our cheeks. we finally insisted that we be referred to a pediatric orthopedist--don't ask why this wasn't done in the first place. but in order to get this referral we had to first face a gauntlet of questioning, first by the referral secretary and then by our pediatrician. (side note: we have since kicked our young, douche bag pediatrician to the curb and he will soon be receiving "fan mail" from us.) we had to actually explain our reasons for wanting a second opinion, as if it isn't a right we're automatically entitled to. and to top it all off, our schmucky pediatrician had the chutzpah to near berate us for not following his every instruction like a love-struck puppy, indicating that as a result of our decisions, baby's dysplasia was now a "2B case as opposed to a 2A case," whatever the hell that means. for four months, we were convinced our daughter was having car trouble based on the jargon we kept hearing; we had no idea what we were actually dealing with. we'd tell doctors and receptionists we were in their office to have a "click" looked at and we'd get looks like "what in the hell did you just smoke? a "click"? are you sure you didn't mean to turn into the car mechanic's next door?" (i make it sound like my nurse mother and doctor father-in-law didn't fill us in on what a "click" actually indicates. we knew all along what was going on and we were making informed decisions throughout the whole process; it's just irritating that we learned none of this from the doctors actually treating our daughter.)
we eventually got that second opinion with a wonderful pediatric orthopedist at one of the top hospitals in the nation. just our luck, she also specialized in infant hip disorders. much to our dismay, the treatment that had been prescribed by schmucky pediatrician and the caterpillar-lipped orthopedist was actually too little too late. the harness we'd been using for two weeks is traditionally used for much younger babies, so our baby, at five months, was too old for this thing. and what really burns my butt is that had we not gotten this second opinion, baby would still be in this harness for the next 3-4 months, which would do her no good and inevitably land us where we are now in the cast. i don't even want to think about the gross motor delays.
anyway, hubby and i made the tough decision to go ahead with the spica cast in hopes that her hip dysplasia would be corrected by the time she's ready to start crawling, standing, walking, etc. we figured the sooner we get this done, the better for our baby. it would be devastating to put her in the cast after she'd already learned to crawl and walk; at least now she doesn't know what she's missing. and like i said, after two weeks in it, baby is still hitting all the usual 5 and 6 month milestones (and she's actually not quite 6 months yet--not until august 11), so we feel quite confident we've made the right decision. there are days, like today, where my heart breaks into a thousand pieces when i clutch my sobbing little girl to my chest while she works through a muscle spasm. but when i think of the pain she would inevitably encounter years down the road without this treatment, it doesn't make her present pain any better, but i at least can rationalize in my head that this is for the best.
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| artwork courtesy of me--white plaster is just so drab |
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